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Friday Lady: a family outing in a Flying 15
This photograph came to us from an enthusiastic early car historian and shows the Cubitt family of Kent getting ready for a trip out in their imposing 15hp Darracq of circa 1904 or 1905.
A prominent Kentish family
The picture comes with no further background information, but the owner would obviously have to have been very wealthy, so it's appropriate that the backdrop is a magnificent stately home, its facade all heavy oak and creeping ivy. It is clearly set up to represent a family outing, with the young boy looking especially happy to be passenger in such an impressive and puissant motor-car. The woman must be their mother or grandmother and, from the way she has seated herself assertively behind the wheel at a time when female motorists were most uncommon, we wonder if she might have had suffragist leanings.
D 59 is a very early Kent registration number, so we might presume that that's where the picture was taken. Interestingly, the number is now held by a preserved 1909 Dennis tourer.
Perhaps you know something of the Cubitt family and their cars. You might even be able to identify the house in the background. If you do know anything more about this wonderful scene, please tell us in the comments below.
Words: Zack Stiling; Photograph: Pete Wood
Publiziert:
Freitag November 4th, 2022
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Kommentare
Diane Reynolds
12 Mai 2023, 20:33
CM RUSSELL
21 April 2023, 17:31
Pleased to say that Eden Hall still stands to this day, albeit dilapidated and ruined. Here is a photo I took in August 2020 of exact door of which we see the Flying 15 in the photo.
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David Scott
05 November 2022, 07:10
I used to work in the construction equipment business and one of our clients was Cubitt's, the boss, a Cubitt member, told me they had built a Cubitt car around 1910 I think, of which about five examples are still extant?
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David Grimstead
04 November 2022, 22:21
The car is parked outside the ornate porch doors of Eden Hall, Edenbridge, Kent. It was the home of Thomas Ricciardi-Cubitt – he added Ricciardi to Cubitt by deed poll in April 1904. His wife, Contessina Maria Fédè Ricciardi was of aristocratic Italian descent - King Edward granted them licence to use the Countess’s Italian nobility title in January 1906. They had three daughters, Vera, Monica and Theodora, almost certainly the girls in the car and they had a son, Cyril, likely here too.
The lady driving the Darracq, too old to be the Italian Countess, is therefore likely to be the children’s grandmother, Mrs. Charlotte Anne Cubitt (nee Kennard), who was 68 in 1904. Her obituary in 1926 said she was “a pioneer of motoring, driving her own car” - this photo surely confirms that.
Alas, it appears the house is probably no more, demolished to make way for a posh Kent housing estate. It had been used as a VAD hospital during WWI, where the Countess remained as the Commandant of the Kent 88 Nursing Detachment and all three daughters served as nurses. Their grandmother by then in her 80s was remembered too for playing her part in comforting the wounded. The son became an army Captain, while his father served with the BEF in Italy. Afterwards the Countess was a donor to the Edenbridge hospital; Eden Hall itself, when sold, became St. Andrews Convent.
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The lady driving the Darracq, too old to be the Italian Countess, is therefore likely to be the children’s grandmother, Mrs. Charlotte Anne Cubitt (nee Kennard), who was 68 in 1904. Her obituary in 1926 said she was “a pioneer of motoring, driving her own car” - this photo surely confirms that.
Alas, it appears the house is probably no more, demolished to make way for a posh Kent housing estate. It had been used as a VAD hospital during WWI, where the Countess remained as the Commandant of the Kent 88 Nursing Detachment and all three daughters served as nurses. Their grandmother by then in her 80s was remembered too for playing her part in comforting the wounded. The son became an army Captain, while his father served with the BEF in Italy. Afterwards the Countess was a donor to the Edenbridge hospital; Eden Hall itself, when sold, became St. Andrews Convent.
Sister Diane... I live in Belgium... we moved from the Eden Hall estate in 2014 and now have a community in London
L